Inkjet printers can be divided into small- and medium-sized printers and large-sized printers depending on size of the inkjet printers. The small- and medium-sized printers are being mostly used for homes, offices and others, and the large-sized printers are being mostly used for industrial purposes.
In addition, technologies relating to 3-dimensional (3D) printers, as well as the inkjet-based 2D printers, have been rapidly developed over years. Recently, 3D printers for desktops have lead to increased popularization of the 3D printers, and the 3D printers are becoming widely available through Internet shopping.
On Jan. 29, 2014, the Overseas Economic Research Institute of Korea forecasted that “As 3D printers will advance the era of customized small quantity batch production, differentiated products and companies beyond the manufacturing structure for mass production will be created, and one-man companies will increase,” and in the meantime, stated that “While interested ones forecasted at the initial stage that 3D printers will replace all manufacturing processes, we expect that specialized areas such as artificial internal organs, ultra-precision processing, and personal DIY will be newly founded due to restrictions in materials, manufacturing costs, time and others,” and “This can be a chance to reorganize global manufacturing business competitiveness, like the phenomenon that the manufacturing business that has moved to Asia will be returned back to the R&D advanced countries such as the U.S.A.”
Printing techniques of general 3D printers are divided into a fused deposition modeling (FDM) technique, a digital light processing (DLP) technique, a stereolithography apparatus (SLA) technique, and a selective laser sintering (SLS) technique. In addition, food materials as well as various types of materials such as ceramic, plastic, metal and resin are also being used for the 3D printers.
Meanwhile, in case of the conventional inkjet technique, various research to resolve the problem of nozzle clogging caused by ink curing in an ink nozzle has been conducted. Since the nozzle clogging phenomenon may also occur in the 3D printing techniques that spray certain liquid through a nozzle as in the inkjet technique, research and technology development to resolve the nozzle clogging problem is also necessary.
For example, 3D printing by the FDM technique accomplishes modeling by melting a thermal curable material in a filament form like a fine thread through a heated nozzle to output the material in a thin film form or depositing liquid sprayed through the nozzle layer by layer. The filament deposited according to the FDM technique is cured at a room temperature so that a final output is produced, but there is a disadvantage in that the melted material is cured at one end of the nozzle.
Meanwhile, Korean Patent Publication No. 10-1124211 (Title of Invention: Inkjet Printer Provided with Nozzle Clogging Resolving Apparatus and Nozzle Clogging Resolving Method Using the Same) resolves nozzle clogging by determining a non-printed area and spraying, by force, ink corresponding to a color of the area that has not been printed.